James Shepherd-Barron - Everything That Follows Is Based on Recent, Real-Life Experience That Has Been Proven to Work: Professional Survival Solutions

Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is complete and accurate. However, neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional advice or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for getting professional help where possible. Some of the activities in this book are by their very nature potentially hazardous. All participants in such activities must assume the responsibility for their own actions and safety. The information contained in this book cannot replace sound judgment and good decision making, which can help reduce risk exposure. It is advisable to learn as much as possible about activities in which you participate, prepare for the unexpected and be cautious. Nothing in this book should be construed or interpreted as infringing the rights of other persons, or to incite violation of criminal or other statutes. The reader is required to obey all laws and respect all rights, including property rights, of others worldwide. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestions in this book.

Copyright 2010 by James Shepherd-Barron

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in Great Britain by Particular Books, an imprint of Penguin Press, a division of Penguin Books Ltd, London, in 2010.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shepherd-Barron, James.
Everything that follows is based on recent, real-life experience that has been proven to work: professional survival solutions / James Shepherd-Barron 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Survival skills. 2. Humanitarian assistance. 3. International relief. I. Title.
GF86.S536 2011
613.69dc22 2010047592

eISBN: 978-0-307-88633-0

v3.1

This book is dedicated to all those humanitarians who have sacrificed themselves while selflessly seeking to make the world a better place. People like Chris Klein-Beekman and Sergio Vieira de Mello, who were tragically murdered in the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations office in Baghdad less than twenty-four hours after I had been with them.

They, and others like them, remain my inspiration.

The book is also dedicated to my two children, Rory and Sam, who may one day understand what their dad has been up to all these years and forgive the long absences. And who might, at the same time, find the contents of this book of some use.

The author wishes to thank the humanitarian experts who contributed to the writing of this handbook, especially Joseph Ashmore and Julia Macro, who helped develop the original idea, and John Adlam, Stacey Winston, Kate Crawford, Brian Kelly, Andrew Macleod, Anna Pont, Wolfgang Gressman, Nicolaas de Zwagger, Mark Cutts, Bibi Lamond, Dave Hodgkin, Tom Corsellis, Jack Jones, Aoibheann OKeeffe, Emma Jowett, Craig Hampton, Laetitia Weibel, Andrew Roberts, Marcus Browell, Ben Verbeke and Jyri Rantanen, who provided invaluable technical advice based on their own field experience.

The author would also like to thank the following, who volunteered their time in order to make this project a reality: Tom Colborne Malpas, Antoinette Sharp, Piers and Sophie Lawson, Nick and Susie Fenwick Clennel, Michael Robinson, Quentin and Isabell Browell, Robert Scott Moncrieff and Jane Hampson.

And finally, none of this would have made it into print if I hadnt stumbled across the best literary agent a first-time author could ever hope for, Caroline Michel of PfD, and if I hadnt been introduced to the experience of being published in the US by Tina Pohlman and her talented team at Random House including Stephanie Chan, Ellen Folan, Jenna Ciongoli, Campbell Wharton, Catherine Pollock, and Heather Lazare. Thanks to you all for your patience in showing me the way.

This handbook was conceived in the snow-clad Karakoram mountains, where I was helping coordinate relief operations following the devastating earthquake of 2005 in Kashmir. Tens of thousands lay trapped, either dead or dying, under the rubble of their schools, offices and homes, with millions more wandering homeless.

I had worked in similar disaster zones around the world, and it became painfully obvious to me that once more too many of the wonderful people arriving to work for the hundreds of aid agencies that had flocked to the area to provide assistance did not know how to cope with the grim realities facing them and were, themselves, in need of support. Less than five years later I watched history repeat itself in Haiti.

Aid work is extremely demanding, both physically and mentally. It demands more than testosterone and adrenaline to help you through the harsh living conditions, exhaustion and emotional highs and lows of working with the victims of disaster; it demands a range of skills and coping mechanisms that can be taught. Yet many of the professional aid workerslet alone the volunteersI was working alongside in Kashmir had received minimal, if any, training in the basic techniques of survival. Despite this, they had been pitched at a few hours notice into working eighteen-hour days and seven-day weeks surrounded by sights, sounds and smells of immense suffering in sub-zero conditions where food, water and shelter were in short supply.

I had seen the same thing in Darfur the year before, and in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo and Iraq before that, where similar threats to an individuals safety and sanity were frequently compounded by aggressive men waving guns around.

Having resolved to do something to help redress this apparent shortcoming within the aid community, I didnt start writing until a forced stay in the hospital two years later allowed me the time. During the months of rehabilitation that followed, the manuscript grew as I committed my experiences and lessons learned to paper. With friends and colleagues commenting on early drafts, it quickly became apparent that the book was resonating with them in some unforeseen way and that the anecdotes and advice it contained appeared to be of practical value to a much wider and less adrenaline-dependent audience, an audience wanting simply to experience remoter parts of the world without being exposed to unnecessary risk.

I was reminded, too, that the aid community comprises international and national staff employed by UN agencies, nongovernmental organizations, the Red Cross movement and others for their wide range of technical qualificationsas communicators, analysts, coordinators, doctors, public-health planners, water-sanitation engineers and architects, for exampleand not for their survival skills. And that all of these highly qualified people are supported by auxiliary staff such as drivers, translators, guards, IT technicians, radio operators, vehicle mechanics, back-office administrators and so on, many of whom are also required to work from time to time in deep-field conditions.